As a follow up to my previous post I thought I’d share some more stuff I’ve been working on. I wouldn’t consider any of it finished.

Dancer

I’d been meaning to do more gesture studies of figures in motion so I freeze-framed a youtube video of a ballerina and scribbled 40 frames. I also tried out some paper textures underneath to see if I could make it feel more authentic.

 Fennec Fox: Gunslinger

This was a flash game I was working on for Stencyl Jam #14. The project grew too big and I didn’t finish it in time. I learned plenty from the experience, though.

His arm was handled separately to allow for switching out weapons

I liked the idea of a punching mechanic but getting it to work proved problematic

The main game was built around a run and gun template for Stencyl. I also put together a rudimentary target practice stage where you’d have alternating good/bad guys.

Good guys

Bad guys

Backgrounds

I experimented with different rendering styles for the backgrounds. First I tried drawing them in the same program as the characters but that looked too flat. Then I tried painting them with a soft airbrush. Eventually I settled on something somewhere between the two – solid shapes molded with shadow, texture, and gradients. This is also where trouble started as you can see I made the backgrounds many screens wide. I’d sketched them that big originally figuring I could just crop where needed. I think I was just afraid a smaller level would make it look like a spammy flash ad instead of a game. Click for full images.

Baddies and Other Character Animations

The funny thing is I’d originally decided to make the game a wild west shoot ’em up to scale back from my bigger idea where that was just a sub-section of the game. Anyway, Stencyl handles animations by designating milliseconds for each frame. I figured the sprites should use as few frames as possible to keep the motions snappy.

I liked the walk cycle I came up with for the monkey. I also had him holding guns with his feet

One of various characters that could shoot

A punching enemy for variety. As with the player character, getting the attack to connect proved tricky

This guy would drop TNT if you got too close. A code thing you could endlessly tweak

I wanted to populate the streets with civilians and such but I just didn’t allot myself enough time

I like the design of this little mouse Señorita

Other

Once the jam ended I’ve been focusing more on animating. I’m trying to refine a finished look I can reproduce regularly and efficiently. Here’s a couple examples of the experimenting I’ve been doing.

Some line width and coloring tests. Click for a fuller view.

Ink and color test

Hi everybody 😀 I recently finished an online art history course and I thought I’d share some of the pieces I put together for it.

Pew! Pew Pew! – Self Portrait with Alien Invasion

I cut out and propped up some of my drawings and dangled pieces of foil on strings in a bit of an homage to Ed Wood. It was fun but setting up a physical set was nerve-racking. The slightest little bump would send things into chaos.

Up, Up, and Away!

We were asked to do a piece based on time so I figured an animated gif would do nicely. I thought about how best to depict the scene and decided a static shot of a wall with a cast shadow would be interesting.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hare

The assignment was to transform one thing into another and back again. I went with a spoof of Jekyll and Hyde. Most of the posters I looked up for reference turned Hyde green so I thought I’d use that to tie the piece together.

Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez’s original

My animated interpretation

My favorite assignment was to do a work based on Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. I took the opportunity to recreate it in a drawn style and to animate the figures. I enjoy the little ticks in this loop, like Velázquez’s hand holding his brush or the figure who blink.

Lets talk a little bit about references. Obviously the best reference is life and actual models. The second best is photos. Below that are things like technical guides and other people’s drawings. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s useful to copy existing art for practice. Van Gogh did some gorgeous copies of Japanese prints, for example. The fact is, the further the artist is removed from the subject they’re rendering, the more is lost in the interpretation. There’s a line between drawing from your imagination and drawing cliche.

There’s an old adage that when you copy somebody’s art you’re not only copying their mistakes but throwing in a few of your own as well. Personally I think it all depends on what kind of person the copyist is and how they approach it. I mean you can draw from photos and make horrible drawings that are based on photographic distortions and an amateurish notion on how to render the human body. You could also draw from photos and only use them as a guide to the pose. I had a prof in college who considered using photos as cheating because the image was already 2 dimensional. If you’re seeking to recreate that exact image then yeah, I guess you could call it cheating, but what’s the point in that?

Here’s some collections online I’ve found to drawn from. I try to play loose when searching for reference and use it more for inspiration as opposed to relying desperately on an image to copy. You’ll see 2 things a lot while looking for dynamic and nude models. A) Pornography that basically says, “Here it is! This is what you want to look at, isn’t it?! LOOK AT IT!” Because we all know nudity is the only requirement for good porn, amirite? B) “Artsy” people that like to photograph themselves. I’d heard stories of the art student that would always photograph themselves nude in a bathtub whatever the assignment was but I never seriously witnessed it until I started looking online for models. I’ll try not to include any of that here.

PoseSpace.com (NWS) is my personal favorite I’ve found so far because they provide a good number of models with various builds in a multitude of poses and they rotate the views.

The Drawing Script (NWS) practice tool for figure drawing.

eyedrawthings expressions from various angles.

Reference! Reference! is a good resource for animators.

More High Speed and Photoinstrumentation Photography (NWS) is another good animation resource as it shows multiple exposures of figures in motion.

Eadweard Muybridge: Defining Modernities (NWS) Example of Muybridge’s famous figures in motion.

EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE on Artsy (NWS) More Muybridge.

Athletic Body Diversity Reference for Artists Good example of how different types of athletes can have various types of builds.

ArtsyPoses (NWS) various models.

SenshiStock Nice DeviantArt gallery of stock model poses.

CuriousPeaches Another nice DA gallery.

comicReference Another DA gallery.

josemanchado (NWS) DA gallery.

Falling-Pixie-Stock Even more DA.

Erieye-Stock (NWS) DA gallery.

homeymodel DA gallery.

idaniphotography (NWS) DA gallery.